Book Review: John A. Chakeres' First Flight
Courtesy of © Daylight Community Arts Foundation
I’ve often thought that, of all the things which can be glimpsed by our eyeballs across the world’s crowded panorama, that which compels the greatest attention are the multifarious objects of the modern world that weren’t created with “art” in mind.
Not to say that a Dyson vacuum cleaner, for instance, isn’t designed deliberately with an eye towards some sort of rigorously thought-out design criteria, only that its function tends to upstage what is that particular appliance’s undeniable sexual magnetism.
Furthermore, as a species, we not only find inanimate objects often pleasing to the eye, we impregnate them with meaning, life. (This tendency reaches its apogee in the so-called animistic religions of, among others, the indigenous peoples of North America and Papua New Guinea.) A manifestation of this strange impulse is found in First Fleet, a visual documentation by photographer John A. Chakeres of NASA’s early-80s space program. There, lifeless shuttles and rockets - ostensibly not built with “art” in mind - are not only admired for their beauty...click here for the full article.
Courtesy of © Daylight Community Arts Foundation